Someone needs to explain this to me:
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, specifically states that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker.” That legalese means that, unlike print and broadcast companies, online service providers cannot be sued for disseminating defamatory attacks on citizens posted by others.
Recent low-profile court decisions document that Congress effectively has barred defamation in cyberspace.
Say what?
If I write a malicious and untrue statement about someone and post it to Wikipedia and in a newspaper’s classified ads, only the newspaper would get in trouble. How does that make sense? Moreover, if it’s going to remain the law of the land, couldn’t libellous publications simply move fully online, post a disclaimer that they don’t guarantee the 100 percent accuracy of their articles and be able to defame freely from then on?
This seems wacky and short-sighted at best.
Find out here. I’m going to try a few more (dozen) times before I post my time. For a guy who can type more than 100 words per minute when I’m in the zone, these scores are exasperating.
Although it lacks the flair and power of Spielberg’s masterpiece, Open Water
stands up well against the classic Jaws. Like the older movie, Open Water’s tension comes more from the little moments and the all-too-human reactions to a terrifying situation.
But if it doesn’t have Spielberg’s masterful touch, Open Water does have far more plausibility to it than Jaws ever did. (I’ve been left behind, briefly, by a dive boat myself, although they never got out of sight.) The terror of realizing how alone, how exposed and how vulnerable they are is where the icy horror of this movie comes from. It’s not a thriller in the traditional sense, and is more disturbing than actually scary.
Definitely worth viewing for fans of Jaws, divers and those afraid to dive …
Although it won’t make anyone forget Prof. Indiana Jones and his father, the somewhat derivative National Treasure is still a fair amount of fun in the same vein.
Blending conspiracy theory with a whirlwind tour of Revolutionary War cities, the movie puts Nicholas Cage on the trail of the ancient treasure of the Knights Templar using clues hidden in plain sight by Founding Father Freemasons.
All of the elements are there: The slightly obsessive lover of history, the beautiful girl who takes herself more seriously than he takes himself and the disapproving father who has an adventurous past of his own. The villains never rise above the level of greedy fortune-hunters (as opposed to the “it belongs in a museum!” motivation that is as close to altruistic as this breed of hero gets), which is one of the flaws in the film, but everyone executes their roles well, including a very grounded Harvey Keitel as a down-to-earth FBI agent pursuing Nicholas Cage and company as they scamper up and down the east coast.
Definitely worth a rental for fans of Indiana Jones, Romancing the Stone and the like.
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